Happy birthday, Post! Those of you who regularly read this column will be aware that I tend to be a rather gloomy guy, always complaining about this or that. Well, this week is going to be different. I am going to make a concerted effort to be happy and positive. Now then... ¹

Ah, the Post is great. Quite simply, it is one of the best things about h2g2. Where else can you see great cartoons for free, drawn by real people who are not, to the best of my knowledge, professional artists or cartoonists. All the Post cartoons are simply wonderful
and thoughtful, and I think that the authors could go on to have very successful careers from them.

I wish I could say that I read everything. Alas, this is not nearly true. I only really read something if the subtitle catches my eye, and even then I tend to turn away if I am not gripped immediately. Just like a real newspaper, then. I won't say which columns I read and
which I ignore for fear of offending some people I know, but I will say that everything here is very well written and we can all be proud of ourselves.

Then there is the rest of h2g2. To this, I would just like to say: Thank You, Everyone. If it wasn't for this great community, I would probably have committed suicide during secondary school (no joke). These great people were for a long time the only thing that kept
me going, though God and occultism later helped. Unlike many other sites, h2g2 is friendly and its members willing to settle problems themselves rather than calling in the mods at the first sign of trouble. The mods seem to do good work and I respect them, but really, what's wrong with a bit of cursing? If it was more acceptable, we would use profanity less, since there would be less shock value. It's like marijuana - when they legalised it in Holland, the rate of pot smoking (and, indeed, violent crime) decreased by a fair amount. So let us
curse, OK? We might even come up with something new, rather than always resorting to the old reliable F-word.

Edited Guide - excellent. It can occasionally seem eclectic rather than comprehensive, but such is the nature of a site like this one. Things are written about gradually, with different things getting different amounts of focus. We have over 100 entries on Pennsylvania as well as an entire University project on its invasion during the US civil war ², yet there are still numerous American states without anything on them at all. So the guide grows weirdly. If you've read any of the Animorphs books, think of morphing into a fly.

However, the Edited Guide is still far, far better than any encyclopaedia, unless of course you are looking for specific information. Thanks to the EG, I know that my average bicycle speed is 120 microparsecs per nanocentury (About three metres per second, I think). Things are described in everyday terms with examples and occasionally personal observations. So another plus!

Then, of course, there is the Unedited Guide. Seriously, take a look at some of the stuff in there. In particular, I recommend looking up 'infinity.' You will get some rather interesting information.

I am now starting to run out of space, so: Underguide good so far, Role Playing excellent and has all the best community elements, everything else fantastic. I love this site and this paper. I am so glad I decided to write for it just before I went to college, otherwise
I'd have missed out on so much. Thank you everybody!

Until we meet again, my friend, this is Hussassan, signing off.

Thee Incredible Weirdness of Being Archive

Hussassan

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